The UK office of the international science community’s prestigious Global Land Project is to hold its first meeting this week (Feb 28-Mar 2).

Over 30 scientists – many of them world renowned – from 10 different countries will gather in Aberdeen for the four day meeting to discuss new ways of understanding the land we live on.

The Global Land Project is an international network of scientists who are taking a new approach to understanding the land. Their aim is to look at how human decisions – such as deforestation or building new towns and cities – affects the land, whilst at the same time considering their interactions with environmental impacts – which include climate change, pollution and soil erosion. This relatively new approach is being termed ‘land system science’.

Executive Officer and conference organiser, Dr Eleanor Milne said: “Historically scientists have tended to study the land around us in terms of either environmental processes such as ecology, biology and geology, or human processes which include sociology, economics and anthropology.

“In order to better understand the land and address many of the resource use and environmental problems we face today, the global community needs to consider both human and environmental processes together.

“This meeting is very exciting as it brings together a range of experts who are taking just this approach, designing and using integrated human-environmental models to consider a range of ‘land system’ issues.”

The workshop is being held at the Global Land Project’s Nodal Office which is based at the city’s Macaulay Institute. The office is one of only four in the world, the others being in China and Japan with the coordinating office in Denmark.

Delegates will focus specifically on ways to design and improve computer models that help us understand why and how the land around us changes. These models combine information on environmental processes, such as the cycling of water and nutrients, with human processes such as agricultural expansion and urbanisation.

As well as a series of presentations and discussions, the participants – some from as far away as China, Brazil, Senegal and the USA – will also be taken on a day long field trip to learn about some of the different drivers of land use in the area surrounding Aberdeen and their associated environmental and economic importance.

The Global Land Project started in 2001. The project is jointly run by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the International Human Dimensions Programme.

The nodal office in Aberdeen is a collaboration between the Macaulay Institute and the University of Aberdeen. It opened just last year and focuses on integrating and modelling information from the human and environmental processes that take place on land.

The Macaulay Institute is the premier land use research institute in the UK. Two hundred and seventy staff are based at the Macaulay Institute at Craigiebuckler in Aberdeen. The Macaulay Institute aims to be an international leader in research on the use of rural land resources for the benefit of people and the environment and is involved in research across the globe; from Scotland to Chile and China. More about the Macaulay Institute can be found at www.macaulay.ac.uk.

Ends

Interviews with Dr Eleanor Milne are available contact Kelly Cromar, Tricker PR on 01224 646491

‘The design of integrative models of natural and social systems in land change science’ workshop runs from the 28 February to 2 March.

For further information please contact:

Kelly Cromar

Tricker PR

9 Victoria Street

Aberdeen

AB10 1XB

Tel: 01224 646491